1. Field
Aspects of the present invention relate generally to an ink for ink-jet recording, an ink cartridge, and an ink-jet recording apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an ink-jet recording apparatus ejects respective colors of yellow, magenta, cyan, and black onto a printing material such as paper. The inks are ejected as droplets from fine nozzles. The droplets of the inks form ink dots on the printing material, so that image data is recorded. In color recording, the inks are mixed at the surface of the printing material according to the image data to express various colors.
When an ink cartridge filled with an inappropriate color ink is mounted on an ink-jet recording apparatus, the intended color record cannot be obtained. When the ink with which the ink cartridge is filled has the same color as that of an appropriate ink but is different in ink composition from the appropriate ink, there is a possibility that the ink may be solidified or deposited inside or outside the fine nozzle, which may hinder normal printing. In order to solve such problems, there is a demand for a method of identifying whether or not the ink cartridge filled with an appropriate ink has been mounted properly on an ink-jet recording apparatus.
In order to meet the demand, the following method is being tested. That is, whether an appropriate ink is used is identified by measuring an absorbance that is obtained when the ink is irradiated with light having the wavelength of the maximum absorption peak. However, the absorbance of an ink stock solution is very high and therefore cannot be measured. Accordingly, in order to identify whether an appropriate ink is used by the aforementioned method, it is necessary to dilute the ink with a solvent such as water and then to measure the absorbance. Hence, in ink-jet recording apparatuses, it has been very difficult to identify simply whether an appropriate ink is used by the aforementioned method.
The following method also is being tested. That is, an ink cartridge with an identification label attached thereto that indicates the color of ink is mounted on a predetermined place of an ink-jet recording apparatus while being checked visually. A method of identifying an ink cartridge with an IC chip attached to the ink cartridge also has been proposed. In the aforementioned method, the main body of the ink-jet recording apparatus reads the information of the IC chip to identify the ink cartridge. In all the above-mentioned methods, however, it is not possible to judge whether the ink itself with which the ink cartridge has been filled is appropriate or not. In all the above-mentioned methods, the cost for the ink cartridge is high.